1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates generally to an improved data processing system, and in particular to a computer implemented method, data processing system, and computer program product for enabling network statistics to be collected per software partition.
2. Description of the Related Art
In an Internet Protocol (IP) network, a message passing mechanism is used to send packets of data between a host machine, such as a server computer on the Internet commonly referred to as a web server, and a client machine, such as user's computer connected to the Internet. The message passing mechanism consists of a transport protocol, an upper level protocol, and an application programming interface. The key standard transport protocols used on IP networks today are the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and the User Datagram Protocol (UDP).
When a network packet is received by an operating system on the host or client machine, the operating system kernel may begin to collect statistics from the packet about the performance of the system. A system's network performance is a common gauge users will look at to determine how the system is operating. Software partitions are used in some systems to provide an isolated environment within one operating system instance. However, in systems which currently employ software partitioning, network statistics that are collected reflect performance information about the overall system. In other words, existing systems which employ software partitioning only allow network performance information to be collected about the overall system, rather than collected for the individual software partitions. This limitation is due to the fact that software partitions share the same network devices with other software partitions and the general system in which they run.